Best Practices for installing solutions

We are 4 days away from doing our final test conversion of our live E 9.05.702A§ environment to E 10.2.200.14 to assure we can perform the conversion smoothly, and provide our users the latest environment to do final acceptance testing for a true final (go live) conversion in early December.

All development has been on E10 (testing/fixing uplifted VB > C# app customizations, converted BAQ review and optimization, BPM conversion to C# directives, SSRS report customizations, Menu adjustments to use modified apps/reports) and we’ve been saving changes as Solutions.

I’m in the midst of testing the installation process of Solutions from our working (not live) E10 environment to the E10 pilot environment (which contains none of our converted E9 data) and documenting the steps so it can go smoothly during this upcoming weekend’s last trial/test conversion as well as the final live conversion scheduled to follow a few weeks later.

Is anyone aware of whether there is a preferred logical sequence of installing solutions?

Example: I’m an hour into installing the custom menu solution and I see nearly every entry is showing an error in the running dialog box.

It occurred to me that there must be a preferred sequence to solution installation so files referenced by other solutions (like menus) are already installed.

I would guess (if true) that means we should install in this order:

  1. BPMs
  2. BAQs
  3. SSRS reports
  4. Client Customizations
  5. Menus
  • because of there interdependent references.

Would that be correct (and is there a clear document out there that indicates the optimal order for installing solutions?)

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Not really, example what worked for me:

  1. EXTENDED USER DEFINED COLUMNS
    1.1 Install Solutions
    1.2 Database Regen / Recycle IIS
    1.3 Spot Check
  2. BAQs
  3. REPORT DATA DEFINITIONS
  4. REPORT STYLES
  5. Customizations
    5.1 Purge Personalizations
    5.2 Customization Maintenance - DELETE ALL First (so I have no stranglers)
    5.3 Install Solution
    5.4 Customization Maintenance - Validate All Customizations
  6. Dashboards
    6.1 Re-Deploy Dashboards, I also included all BAQs related to dbds here again, incase I missed some
  7. Menus
  8. Crystal Rpt Files / BarTender Files
  9. DATA DIRECTIVES & METHOD DIRECTIVES
    9.1 Delete Existing 1 by
    9.2 Install Solution
    9.3 Go to Directive Update and Recompile All + Refresh Signatures
    9.4 Spot Check
  10. User Codes
  11. Extended Properties
  12. Misc SQL Scripts / Tweaks

I broke it up where it made sense like Dashboards, each dashboard has its own Solution.

  • Customizations I just placed them all into 1 .cab
  • RDDs / Styles for most part are bundled, a few are seperated.
  • BAQs I just included all the ones I uplifted in 1 .cab
  • BPMs I broke it up by Group. Like ChangeLogs, Auto-Prints, etc…
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what about scheduled task agents, BPM data forms and New menus ?

One other thing to be wary of is new menu items and security assignments to them. When we went from E9 to E10 there were some new menu items provided via the upgrade, and we didn’t catch it until live a few weeks. Of particular concern were the new upgrade / Mass regen tools provided. They were a ‘free for all’ until we got them tied down for privileges.

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New Project related menu items in 10.2.400 too.

Are you using the Solution Manager to move these? if so, you can put all of that into one solution (in theory)… With some exceptions:

  1. I personally have created the UD Fields first and regenerated the DB to make the move smooth
  2. there have been problems moving NEW Menu/security options in the past.

The solution manager has not been “perfect”, and I regularly combine all the following (and more) into one solution to move from one environment to another. In fact… SOLUTIONS will move BPMs better than the older Export/Import procedure because it will overwrite the old version as long as the name is the same.

  1. BAQ/UBAQ
  2. Dashboards
  3. Screen Customizations
  4. Data/Method BPMs
  5. User Codes
  6. Quick Searches
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